


in the aftermath

by orangejuicing



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Coping, Developing Friendships, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, kids being stupid, lots of gayness mainly surrounding robin, standalone chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 13:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19746883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangejuicing/pseuds/orangejuicing
Summary: *Major Season 3 Spoilers*Fluff, angst, one-shots, and short series of the characters grieving, moving on, and just living after the events of season 3. Most of the chapters can be read in any order.





	in the aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> here's a chapter of will and el bonding- it's a friendship i hoped would be explored in season 3, but unfortunately it wasn't.
> 
> i am so sorry for the rushed quality and lack of editing lol, i hope you enjoy this despite it being a complete mess

Will Byers is adjusting.

‘Adjusting’ is the word his new therapist uses when she explains the hardships of moving. She tells him that she’s moved too, how hard it is to leave behind your friends. She makes sure to emphasize that she really  _ understands _ what he’s going through.

Will doesn’t think she does. 

The new house is still fairly empty, though not overwhelmingly so. It leaves room for new memories, as Joyce embellishes.

Will’s pretty sure they just can’t afford more things to fill it.

It’s not a particularly big house, but there’s room enough for four people. Will shares a bedroom with Jonathan, which is something neither of them have much opinion on. It might be a bigger issue if they had brought more with them, because with two twin beds, the room seems to shrink in on itself, not leaving much space for more than a single dresser and a few haphazardly placed boxes. 

They don’t talk much, but then, neither of them have ever been the type to talk just to fill the silence, like Lucas and Dustin, or because they like the sound of their own voice (Mike). 

The silence might unnerve some people, but it’s a breath of fresh air to Will. It’s a relief not to have to talk, after months of “Talk to me, sweetie” and “Can you tell me what you saw?” and “Explain it again to this nice man”, so on and so forth. Will is sick of explaining.

But as always, with too much time, the silence becomes suffocating, and Will finds himself waking up in the early hours of the morning to a dull sense of loneliness that doesn’t leave. It follows him eagerly, ready to consume him anytime his eyes land on the newest version of DnD or the fireworks displays at the general store near their house.

Will hates the feeling constantly gnawing at his gut, hates that he can only talk to the entire party once a week through Cerebro, hates the lack of a Castle Byers to run to when it all becomes too much.

His therapist suggests starting a gratitude journal, which Will nods along to like he actually believes it’ll help. After a month of torn and tearstained pages, it becomes a full-on diary. Will doesn’t think he’s gotten any happier, but it’s nice to be able to confide in something, even if it’s just a dumb black-covered notebook.

Initially, Will had been excited to get to know El better, maybe toast Eggos together, maybe teach her how to draw. Even play DnD, if she wanted to. But she’s been strangely quiet, as if she’s absorbed the atmosphere of the house, only speaking when spoken to and reassuring Joyce as she fusses and worries over her. She spends most of her days alone in her room, scribbling on pieces of paper with no rhyme or reason as far as Will can tell. Sometimes she sits for hours on the floor with a bandana taken from Joyce’s closet covering her eyes, radio static singing a haunting abstract song in the background. These sessions either end with her throwing the bandanna to the ground in angry frustration, or drifting off after hours of nothing happening. Often, Will comes home from school to see her slumped against her bed, fast asleep, red stripes still resting over her eyes.

Joyce works late. Sometimes she isn’t home until after ten, so Jonathan makes whatever he can find in the fridge for dinner, and Will and El eat in silence. Occasionally they make small talk, but mostly they don’t. It’s almost as if there’s a heavy fog of unsaid words between them, too thick to see or break through.

One Friday evening, Joyce comes home early, cheeks pink from the autumn chill and a thick envelope in her hand.

“Everyone got off early today,” she explains. “There was some sort of problem with the drainage in the building. But I stopped by the post office on the way home, and guess what was there for us?”

“A letter?” Jonathan says in a way that makes Will question if he’s being sarcastic or not.

Joyce swats him lightly on the arm. “Of course it’s a letter, Jonathan. But it’s from the Wheelers!” Her voice is filled with so much excitement- and maybe hope- that Will forces a smile.

“Mike?” El says, suddenly interested.

“Let’s open it and see,” Joyce says, still in that overly cheerful voice, sliding her thumb under the seal and tearing open the envelope. A snowstorm of photos falls out, some stragglers drifting slowly down.

The top photo is a picture from Mike’s tenth birthday. Lucas and Dustin stand to Mike’s right, huge phony grins on their faces. Will is on Mike’s left, but he’s so close that their cheeks are touching as Mike’s arm wraps around his shoulders. A wide smile is stretched across his face, and there are cake crumbs on his chin. In front of them, a half eaten cake rests on the table, its icing design destroyed by the knife that’s still stuck into it.

Will remembers that birthday party like it was yesterday. That was the day Mike got their DnD board and handbook. They spent the entire night creating their characters and figuring out how to play. Will remembers coming home the next day and sleeping until dinnertime. Even now, it’s one of his happiest memories.

Eleven picks up a picture of Mike and Will curled up in sleeping bags in Mike's basement. She traces a finger lightly over Mike’s face, and Will feels a pang of something bitter in his chest.

Joyce pulls a sheet of paper out of the envelope, and when she speaks again, her voice is shaking slightly. “Mrs. Wheeler says that Mike thought you two might like to have these pictures. And-um, Jonathan, there’s a note from Nancy here too.” She hands the letter to Jonathan, who clutches it like his life depends on the thin sheet of stationary. 

Will can feel his chest tightening as his eyes land on each photo, and he almost wishes that Mike hadn’t bothered to send them. His eyes burn in the way they always do when he feels like he’s about to cry.

“I’m gonna go outside,” he says thickly, and Joyce gives him a worried look, but she doesn’t comment. Will can feel El’s eyes on him as he opens the back door to their backyard, so much smaller than the forest behind his house back in Hawkins. There’s no Castle Byers here, destroyed or not, and the thought of the comfort of the familiar fort makes his heart ache even more. He turns the corner, so that nobody can look out and see him, and slumps against the wall, where his tears finally spill over. He lets out a choked sob, muffled under his hands, and why does his chest hurt so much? It feels like something inside him is missing. The brick wall digs into his back, but he can barely feel it over the aching hollow in his chest.

Will takes a deep breath, scrubbing his face with his sleeves.

_ Why can’t he control his own emotions? _

After a moment, he hears the back door creak open, and quickly wipes his eyes. Surely his face is blotchy too, but there’s really nothing he can do about that.

He’s expecting Joyce, or maybe even Jonathan, but when someone finally does turn the corner, it isn’t either of them. It’s El.

Her hair is blowing into her face as she kneels beside him, an odd look in her eyes.

“Will,” she says, and is that pity in her voice?

“What,” Will says, and he’s horrified to hear the way his voice shakes.

“You miss Mike.” El doesn’t have to say more than that before Will’s tears spill over again, and the strange, soft-spoken girl who sits alone in her room across the hall, reaches over and squeezes Will’s hand.

“Do you miss Castle Byers?” El asks, and Will pulls his hand away in shock.

“How do you know about Castle Byers? Did Mike tell you?” Will’s voice is panicked and he’s not even sure why, but this just feels like something El shouldn’t know.

“I saw your…. die-ry,” El says, the word fragmented, like she’s unsure of how to say it.

“You read my diary…?” Will stares at her, upset but not entirely surprised. He should have thought to hide his things. “Diaries are private, El. You’re not supposed to read mine.” He adds an “okay?” in a softer tone, in case his voice is too harsh in his shock.

“Oh.” El looks embarrassed. “I thought…”

“It’s okay,” Will says. “I’m not mad or anything. I am gonna go back inside, though.” He’s starting to stand up when El tugs his arm, and he turns to look at her.

“But I want to..” El struggles for the right words. “Make Castle Byers.”

“You want to…?” It takes Will a second to realize what she means. “You want to remake Castle Byers? Here?”

El nods excitedly, her hair bouncing around her shoulders at the vigorous motion.

“I don’t know, El,” Will says. “I mean, our backyard’s pretty small, and we don’t even have any supplies…” he trails off as El’s face crumples.

“But!” Will says hastily, and the brunette’s eyes follow him hopefully. “Um… we could ask my mom if we could make a fort inside tonight, and maybe at some point we could build a treehouse? Like up there?” He points to the large oak, which hangs over their house almost ominously. Surely there was room for a treehouse up there somewhere.

“Okay,” El says. She stands up, brushing the dirt off her knees, and Will follows her inside.

“Hey, Mom?” Will says once he reaches the kitchen table, where she and Jonathan are engrossed in Mrs. Wheeler’s letter.

“What is it, Will?” Joyce looks up, probably noticing the tear stains on Will’s cheeks. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. El and I were just wondering-”

“Can we build Castle Byers?” El jumps in, unable to contain herself.

“Well, can we build a treehouse, is what she means,” Will clarifies. “And a blanket fort tonight.”

“Um…” Joyce’s eyes dart from Will’s pleading gaze to El’s excited one. “Yes to the blanket fort- you can use the dining room chairs in the garage to tie the blankets to. And I guess we can go to the hardware store tomorrow and get some wood, for your treehouse.”

“I can help you guys build it,” Jonathan says. “There’s gonna be stuff you won’t be able to lift, little guy.” He ruffles Will’s hair.

Joyce shoots Jonathan a thank-you look, and Will isn’t sure if it’s because she doesn’t think she has the physical strength to build with them or just doesn’t have the time. Probably the latter.

“Thanks, Mom!” Will grabs El’s hand and pulls her down the hallway. “Thank you,” she echoes.

“Blankets are on the top shelf in the hall closet!” Joyce calls after them, but they’re already halfway to the garage.

Switching on the dim light, Will is reminded of why they rarely go in here. Boxes are stacked ceiling high in some places, and dust cakes every available surface. The dining room chairs, which they have yet to use for any purpose except collecting dust bunnies, are stacked near the door. This is lucky, because Will isn’t sure there’s even a walkable path through all the clutter.

He and El have to take two trips to get all the chairs they need, and as they lug them into El’s room, Will realizes they’ve tracked garage dust and grime along the carpet.

“Whoops,” he whispers to El, who’s looking at him with wide eyes, and she cracks up.

They end up sort of ignoring the mess until Jonathan sets the vacuum cleaner in front of Will and clears his throat before promptly walking away. Strangely enough, it’s sort of fun vacuuming, and Will chases El with the hand-held piece for a solid ten minutes. She ends up grabbing it from him and suctioning his face, which doesn’t hurt, but he acts like he’s being boiled alive. For some reason, he has a Scottish accent while he pleads with El to stop torturing him. She finds this hilarious, and for a while they take turns suctioning each other’s arms because it just feels and looks so weird.

It takes them almost an hour to get the dust cleaned up.

By that time, it’s after seven, so they head into the kitchen to find Joyce making homemade waffles.

“They’re no Eggos, but I hope you like them,” she says.

El eats nine waffles drowning in syrup, barely stopping to breathe between bites. Will is no expert at reading her moods, but he’s  _ pretty _ sure she likes them.

After their odd dinner, they finally get to work on their fort. It’s actually quite a quick job, and it goes by with barely any incidents.

At one point, Will knocks a pillow off the fort’s almost-finished side, and as he turns to retrieve it, he can see El’s eyes narrow at the spot where it’s fallen, and she tilts her head before the realization of her lack of powers hits her anew. 

“It’s okay,” Will says when he sees her crestfallen expression. “We don’t need powers anyway.” He picks up the pillow and tosses it to El, who catches it, startled.

“Yeah,” El says, and her voice is quieter than usual, almost sad. “We don’t need powers.”

She replaces the pillow and crawls inside the blanket fort. Will follows suit. It’s cozy inside, but roomy, and he can’t help but feel a twinge of pride at their handiwork.

“Hey, um…” Will hesitates a moment before finishing his sentence. “I know you miss Mike, and nothing is the same now... but for the record, I really miss him too.”

“I miss Mike,” El agrees. “We will see him at Thanksgiving.”

“Yeah.” Will smiles at the thought. “But for now, we just have each other, so I’m glad… um, I’m glad we’re rebuilding Castle Byers.”

El flops onto her back. “Castle Byers,” she repeats.

“It needs a new name, doesn’t it? Castle Byers is kinda outdated.” Will rests his chin on his hands. 

“A new name…” El sits up. “Like Castle Mike.”

Will lets out a surprised laugh. “Oh. Um. Yeah, I guess, but I was thinking more along the lines of… um. I don’t know. What’s something you really like?”

“Waffles,” El says quickly.

“Castle Eggo?” Will suggests.

“No.” El immediately shoots the idea down. “Waffle House.”

“That’s a restaurant,” Will says, leaning back on his pillow.

“And our fort.” El has a stubborn look on her face that Will is slightly worried about.

“How about Fort Eggo-”

“Waffle House.”

“Okay,” Will says in defeat. “Waffle House.”

El starts giggling, and it must be contagious, because before long Will is gasping for breath. His cheeks hurt, and he can’t remember the last time he laughed this hard. Isn’t that funny?

Tomorrow he and El are going to buy supplies at the hardware store, and maybe they'll- with Jonathan’s help- build their treehouse. Waffle House.

But tonight, all Will can do is laugh. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> if anybody enjoyed this, i have several more chapters planned but i would be more than happy to take requests! feedback is much appreciated <3


End file.
